


Figment

by annalore



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Alcohol, Divorce, Friendship, M/M, overstepping boundaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2012-11-07
Packaged: 2019-07-15 10:58:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16061702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annalore/pseuds/annalore
Summary: Punk’s tweet during the 10/22 Raw was just a throwaway joke, so why is John so hung up on it?





	1. Figment

_Marty DeRosa: Wait, these wrestlers hook up with each other?  
CM Punk: A completely fabricated rumor.  Never happens._

 

The show is over and you’re just finishing packing your bag when he knocks on your door.  All your history, your current rivalry, and John actually knocks on your open door, waits for you to look up and respond.

“What could you possibly want now?” you ask wearily.  You have no patience for John Cena right now.

He holds up his phone.  “I was just catching up on my Twitter.  What’s this about?”

Of course, you can’t _see_ his phone from this distance, so you consider being a dick to him and making him explain what he means, but the truth is, you know exactly which tweet he’s talking about.  What you don’t know, or hope you don’t, is why he’s asking.

“Maybe I was throwing you a bone,” you suggest dismissively, zipping up your bag.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “You were being a raging hypocrite.  For all I know, you’re the one who made up these ridiculous allegations about me and AJ.”

You narrow your eyes at him incredulously.  “Did you see what just happened to me out there, John?  I was better off with AJ.”

“Then tell me--” John starts, then stops.  He frowns at his phone, tilts his head as if he’s trying hard to remember something that just isn’t coming. You recognize this for the dangerous territory it is.  “Punk, tell me...”

“Figment of your imagination, John,” you say as you shoulder your bag, walk past him and out the door.  “Never happened.”

You remember too late that that’s not what your tweet said.  The last thing you see of John is his frown deepening.

*****

Later, back at the hotel, you’re just stepping out of the shower when there’s a knock on your door.  You don’t bother putting anything on, just wrap a towel around your waist.  It seems like a good idea until you open the door to find John standing on the other side.

He's seen you in a lot less, sees you in less on a regular basis, but you know this is different even before you see the covetous gleam in his eyes, the shell shocked look on his face, as though he’s being haunted by a memory he can’t quite grab hold of.

He takes a halting step towards you and reaches out a hand as if to touch you.  He’s touched you plenty of times in the ring, but again, this is different.  You take a step back.  “John,” you say sharply, and he snaps out of it.

He shakes his head confusedly.  “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he says.  He waits a minute, as if he expects you to tell him.  When you say nothing, he turns away and leaves.

As you look down the now empty hallway, you curse under your breath.  You never think these things through.  All you meant to do was make a tongue-in-cheek reference to your own past history with AJ, but you should’ve known it had the potential to shake something loose in John’s head.

****

A few hours later, you’re still not asleep when there’s another knock on your door.  You’re not really expecting it to be John for a third time, especially not at this hour, but you throw a shirt on over your shorts just in case.

Of course it is him.  You can tell the second you see his face that he’s been drinking, so you let him in without comment.  The last thing you need is a drunk John Cena causing a scene outside your room in the middle of the night.

“I remember,” he pronounces proudly, stepping into your personal space.

“What is it you think you remember?” you ask, trying for a bit of bravado.

“I _remember_ ,” he repeats, backing you against the wall.  You catch the warm, yeasty scent of beer on his breath, the tang of alcohol.  It’s more familiar than you’d like it to be.  “So don’t tell me I imagined it.”

“You’re drunk, John,” you say instead, still hoping that he doesn’t really remember anything, whatever it is he thinks he knows.  You made an agreement, and even though you were on better terms then than you are now, you intend to keep it.

“Do you know that I dream about you?” he asks.  You look up against your will, into his eyes.  “Sometimes I step into the shower with you... Sometimes I invite you onto my bus and I...” he lifts his hand, touches your cheek with his fingertips.  “Was that real?  Did that happen?”

You swallow hard, well on your way to being seduced, despite your best intentions.  “No, John.  That never happened.”

And it didn’t happen that way.  You know, you remember, because you were sober when it did, like you always are.

It happened in the summer, when his marriage, his life, was falling apart.  When he started drinking to forget, and you were the only person he trusted to stop him from doing anything stupid.

It happened when you were friends, and he used you to forget.  In a hotel room a lot like this one, his breath hot in your ear, asking for just one night.  Back then, things like love and loyalty had seemed a lot more important than respect.

“Then tell me what did!”  He slams his hand against the wall in frustration, startles you.  It’s clear to you then that he doesn’t really remember anything.

"Why don’t you go back to your room and sober up,” you suggest, refusing to flinch.

“I need to know, Punk.  _Please_.”

The desperation in his voice weakens you, almost makes you crumble.  But you know you can’t do it.  It’s just the alcohol that does this to him, and knowing won’t make him want you, it’ll only make him hate himself.

“Why don’t you tell me what you think happened,” you say challengingly.  Daring him to say it.

Emotions war on his face, and you’d swear he comes closer than you ever thought he would.  But he backs down in the end, takes a step away from you.

“Nothing,” he says.  “Nothing, it was just a fabricated... figment of my imagination.”

You nod, but you have to lean against the wall to support yourself.  “Go, John,” you whisper, your voice oddly small and weak, even to your own ears.

He looks at you for a long moment, and you think he’s going to say something, but then he doesn’t.  He just backs away and leaves.

***

You don’t sleep at all that night.  You can’t even face lying on your bed for remembering, so you sit in the rolling desk chair and stare at the pages of a magazine.

What you see is John, blushing as he tells you he’s never done this before.  It goes without saying that you have, that you know exactly what you’re doing.

You see John underneath you, asking if it’ll hurt.  Trusting you to tell him the truth.  You see him straining under you, his face transfixed as he comes.

“I probably won’t remember this tomorrow,” you hear him mumble.  You remember saying you could remind him, still buried deep inside him.  “No, don’t,” he said as he fell asleep.  And you vowed that you wouldn’t.

You see him in the airport later, catch a glimpse of him across the terminal.  He’s walking with Randy, a crowd of fans following after them.  He smiles and laughs at something you can’t hear, then he’s gone.

You took his virginity and he took your self respect.  Most days, it doesn’t seem like a fair trade, but on a day like this, you think you’d do it all over again, just to see him happy.


	2. Mirage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A continuation of Figment. Punk just wants to forget what happened at Hell In A Cell, but John would rather remember. HIAC speculation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was without power from Monday afternoon through Saturday evening, so I haven’t actually seen Hell In A Cell yet. This is a speculation on what might have (though I wish did not) happen. The beginning of this was written by candlelight during the blackout, and I wanted to get it finished and posted before I see HIAC.

There’s always something that fails in you.  Your tact, your ability to kiss ass and play politics.  Your courage.  Your principles.  Your body, your strength.  You never thought you’d live to see the day your heart would fail you, the day you’d flat out give up when you knew you could take more, go longer, work harder.

To some minds, there’s no shame in admitting defeat before a superior foe, but you’re not sure that’s what happened, so shame is what you feel as you lie on the sofa in your bus after the show is over.  It’s dark and you’re alone and it suits your mood just fine.

You’re surprised when you hear someone boarding the bus.  You had another fight with Kofi backstage.  He told you he was going to ride with someone else.  He often changes his mind about you, though; he’s unfailingly forgiving.  For once, you wish he weren't.

He settles in his usual seat as the bus starts moving.  You keep your eyes closed and try to go right on ignoring the world.  You must fall asleep, because before you know it, the bus is picking up speed as you hit the highway.

“What happened?” you ask ungraciously.  “Your ride fall through?”

“Something like that,” he says, and your eyes shoot open and you’re halfway upright before you can even think of the twinge in your back, because it’s not Kofi at all, it’s John.

As you stare at him across the narrow aisle, you give serious thought to firing your driver.  “What the fuck are you doing on my bus?” you demand, rubbing your side aggrievedly.

He shrugs and gives you a half smile, as if this were an everyday sort of thing, just a friendly surprise.  “I wanted to talk to you.”

“I should kick you out onto the highway,” you growl.  You have half a mind to do it, pull over and leave him stranded, but you shudder at the thought of something like that getting back to management, especially now that you don’t have the shine of gold to shield you.  “Have you ever heard of a fucking phone call?”

“You know, it’s funny, I tried that.”  He pulls out his phone and taps it for emphasis.  “It turns out you don’t answer when I call.”

It’s a point you have to concede, John’s stupid comedy schtick aside.  Of all the people you’re trying to avoid, he is first and foremost on the list.  Even if you remembered where you chucked your phone, even if you had it turned on, you wouldn’t take his call, but you figure that’s a privilege you’ve earned.

“Maybe that should tell you something,” you say.

He shrugs again.  That’s John Cena for you, the perennially cheerful stalker, undissuaded by reality.  But now that he’s here, you can’t help remembering a time when things were better.  It’s memory that always gets to you, and not just the things you remember that he doesn’t.  It’s moments like this, sitting on your bus or his, whiling away the hours between cities.  It’s moments just like this that bring you down, brought you down tonight, and you wonder if he realizes what he demands of you just by existing.

“Just--” he says, turning serious.  “I know you went out on a limb for me.  And I--”

“I don’t know where you got that impression,” you cut in before he can say anything else.

“You know, I wasn’t really sure _what_ happened out there, so I ran by the production truck after the show and got ahold of the footage.  It said a lot.”

You’re afraid he has one up on you, because you haven’t seen what happened via an impartial eye, don’t know what the commentary team said about it.  All you know is how it happened for you.  In your own mind, there was a choice, the classic what-do-you-value-more choice presented in so many comic books and movies.

On the one hand, your title, which meant everything to you.  On the other, John Cena, getting destroyed by Brock Lesnar outside the Cell.  And in the middle, you, fighting a battle you might not win, but which wasn’t over yet.  Two prizes hanging in the balance, and you couldn’t save both.  In the end, you went down to Ryback because you couldn’t stand to have it go on any longer.

“Tell me,” you say to him, a full measure of bitterness in your voice.  “How did it play to the camera when they gave him my championship?”

“It’s not the end of the world, you know?” he says in response.  It doesn’t escape you that it’s half a statement and half a question, and though he sounds sympathetic, it galls you.

“Don’t say that to me,” you say, anger and shame welling together in your gut. “Don’t you fucking say that to me, because I have lost _everything_ I care about.”

“You lost the title.  That’s not everything.”  He shakes his head, as if he really thinks you’re just that shallow.

You sigh and lean back against your seat in defeat.  “I’ve lost so much more than that.  You don’t even know.”

You don’t know why you say this to him, because you don’t want him to know what he means to you, that he is the sum and total of everything you’ve lost, both the reason and the result. You don't want him to know how he makes you burn and how he makes you hate yourself.  How even after everything, you still sacrifice for him.

“I can tell you one thing you still have,” he says finally.  “You have my gratitude.  For tonight, and for everything.”

“But what is everything, John?” you ask.  You’re like the kid who can’t help picking at a scab, inevitably revealing the bleeding wound underneath, creating scars that will be with you for the rest of your life.

You watch as he struggles with a response, tries to decide how far he’s willing to go.  You may have promised yourself you wouldn’t tell him, but that doesn’t stop you from passive aggressively wishing he’d figure it out on his own, sometimes.

“Being there for me when I needed you the most,” he starts, weighing each word carefully.  “You could have let me disappear down the bottom of a bottle, let me lose everything _I_ care about, but you didn’t."  He smiles at you nervously, suddenly blushing and awkward.  “And I know... I know that something happened between us...”

You run a hand over your face, massage your temple.  “It’s okay, John,” you say wearily.  You can’t let him go on, because you can see that every word hurts him and he is still the weakness in you, the thing that you go out of your way to protect.

“I do respect the decisions you’ve made,” he says softly.

You wait for the anger and bitterness to come at the mention of respect at this late date, but it never does.  Instead, something settles in you, some hurt you’ve been carrying is soothed.  You wonder if this is really what you’ve been seeking all along, some small acknowledgement of the pain you’ve been through.  You want so much more from him than you can even admit, but this may be the best you’ll ever get, and he’s right, it’s more than nothing.

“If I’d known all it would take was losing the title...” you say, shaking your head.  Like it’s just a small thing, and with him sitting across from you, it almost is.  Almost.

“Whether you believe it or not, I’m sorry that happened,” he tells you earnestly.

Maybe you should believe him, you’re not sure.  You were friends once, and it was by your choice that you aren’t anymore.  And this was never about the title, not really.  It was never the luster of gold that separated you from him.

“Yeah, me too,” you say, lying back down, weariness permeating every part of your body.

But you’re not, not really.  You don’t measure failure in an instant, in a single action on a single night.  And even if you’re not particularly inclined to think of yourself as noble, there’s a price you’re willing to pay for love, and a greater one still for love of John.

**Author's Note:**

> I struggled with this quite a bit, but I wanted to get it finished up and posted before I see Hell In A Cell. And if you are wondering, I am not capable of writing anything happy, because I have a dark and twisted soul. Truthfully, these things don’t seem quite so angsty in my head as they end up being.


End file.
